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Last year at this time, my cousin from Australia and I drove our to the East Coast on an adventure with my two kids. I didn’t get a chance to post our trip on my blog but decided it was too funny not to publish what happened to us…so here it goes.

Friday, August 9, 2013

We left Quebec City to make our way to New Brunswick today. When we got to Riviere de Loupe, we only had 1/4 tank of gas left. One of my cousins who had visited the East Coast before, forewarned me to make sure I filled up at a gas station in Edmunston (I thought that was what she said) because there wouldn’t be any gas station for miles and miles and miles. I figured with 1/4 tank of gas that we would safely get to Edmunston for a fill up after we left Riviere do Loupe, but boy was I wrong.

Mountains and trees was all we could see for miles and miles and miles. I often stretch the limit when the yellow empty gas tank light goes on at home…but that’s when I know where the gas stations are. My husband always freaks out on me when the empty gas light goes on and has told me that one day I would get stuck. “That’s why we have CAA”, I would tell him. “Let me out of the car”, he would respond, “I’d rather take the TTC”. Truth be known, I like to see him sweat (and besides, I know that even on empty, I can drive downtown and all the way home on a yellow light because I’ve done it before!). However, this was different. Now I was driving in an unfamiliar province and I didn’t know how long it would take CAA to bring me gas in the middle of no where. Besides, I didn’t have a cell phone. How would I call them?

Well, the yellow light appeared and my sisters GPS (which I borrowed) didn’t show any signs of civilization or gas for miles. My cousin told me not to worry because we had at least 50 km left to find a gas station. We temporarily stopped at some guys house off the road to ask, but it really looked like an axe murderer lived there and I was secretly glad no one answered the door. Actually, you couldn’t get to the door because there was a wooden plank barring the entrance. Thought that was weird. So I hopped back into the car and kept going. I was getting anxious that we were going to get stuck on the highway. “Bobo will be in his glory when he hears this story”, I thought.

Shortly thereafter we saw a cop car who pulled over some poor slop who was speeding. Boo told me to pull over and ask the cop. I wasn’t sure that was a good idea, but I didn’t think we had much of a choice. So I stopped behind the cop car. Not a good idea.

The police officer got out of his car…and he had his hand on his gun. “Holy sh*#$%”, I thought, “This guy is going to shoot us!” I’d better say something fast. Meanwhile, my crazy cousin who was sitting in the passenger side, starts waving her arms around like a mad woman. “What the heck is she doing that for”, I thought. I’m not sure what she was saying because I had my eyes fixated on the gun. I rolled down my window and told him that I was out of gas and would he mind telling me where the nearest gas station was. He hesitated, looked at all of us in the car, and then told me it was about 20 kms away in a place called Cabano. Good think the kids were in the car. I think he was as relieved that we posed no immediate danger to him because he took his hand away from the gun and walked back to the driver of the speeding car.

As we drove by him, I told Boo that at least if we run out of gas down the road, we know there’s a cop behind us and he would recognize our car if we got stuck at the side of the road.

We took the next exit ramp and discovered a gas station where the attendant actually came out to fill up our car. However, he really kind of looked like Quasimodo and I was quite scared to death and so were the kids. One of his eyes was twitching and I think he had a limp. I swear if I didn’t desperately need the gas, I would have taken off like a shot, but we wouldn’t have gotten very far on empty. I asked him to fill it up and gave him a tip. Locked the car door and got the heck away from there at lightening speed. Beginning to think that travelling in New Brunswick was not exactly a good idea.

It rained on our way to Fredericton. We stopped at a Best Western Hotel with a salt water pool and then went out in search for a lobster dinner. We are on the hunt for the best seafood dinner on the coast. Can’t bring my husband to the East Coast for seafood dinner because he would buy the crab/lobster set it free in the sea. “Be free! Be free!”, he would shout, “And don’t get trapped again”. I never order lobster at a restaurant when he is around because he starts making shrieking noises (he claims that is the sound it makes when it goes into the pot). But they taste so good.

Must say they have an interesting presentation of lobster dinner in New Brunswick. Never seen anything like this in Ontario.

Sorry I haven’t written in a very long time. I’ve had some heart issues lately which I was trying to deal with. Ended up in the hospital in June with severe chest pains because I thought I was having a heart attack. I think my blood pressure got too low because I started taking a new heart medication (called ramipril) and my heart was barely beating when I woke up that morning. My principal Anna drove me to the nearby hospital. The ER doc. told me never to go there again. Go downtown where all my records are. Over six hours later, good news, I didn’t have a heart attack and I was sent home. I asked if I could have an echo to see how well my heart was pumping (as I was convinced I was having heart failure again), but the ER doctor told me it was up to my heart doctor to schedule that for me.

I decided I had to be my own advocate since my heart doctor is away until September. Case in point….never get ill near or during the summer break because no one is around. Even though I was sent to a replacement heart doctor two weeks later, he didn’t want to do anything (ie: send me for an echo test) until my doctor came back. I was already scheduled for a non-urgent Cardiac MRI (since April). My heart doctor told me he wanted to be present when I had this test, so I guess I’m really out of luck there.

I had a gut feeling that something was going on with my vitamin and mineral levels in my body. Someone at Gilda’s Club highly recommended that I try her naturopathic doctor in Mississauga. So I went. The woman gave me a lot of supplements and after 2 visits (which ended costing me over $800), I felt a lot worse.

So I went to my family doctor to get some blood work done and asked her to check my vitamin D level (had to pay $35 for that test) and iron. Discovered I was taking way too much Vitamin D (I was at a toxic level) and for some reason my liver isn’t flushing out my iron either and I have an overload of that too. The wacky naturopathic doctor told me to take 6000 mg of Vitamin D. I was taking 4,000 at the time. When I searched on the internet about appropriate dosing, I discovered 2,000 mg was the recommended daily dose and 4,000 mg is the intolerable level. Not happy with that naturapath because she didn’t tell me to check with my doctor to see what my levels were in the first place. So I went off all my meds/vitamins for a while and slowing introduced one back a time to figure out why my heart was going wacky. It’s been a trying experience, but I feel much better now that I stopped taking the vitamin D and the other two heart medications the heart doctor gave me which caused irregular heartbeats, insomnia, chest pains, and a metallic taste in my mouth. I’m now taking CoQ10 which has significantly helped me my heart and now I think it’s going back to normal. The irregular heartbeats are becoming more infrequent and I’m not getting any chest pains.

Yesterday I had a CT Scan (organs) and am awaiting the results. I am plenty nervous about that. But I am even more nervous about my upcoming spinal MRI because last week I went to a meditation yoga class and when I was on the mat and rolled over I heard a crunch or a rip near my T12 (where the titanium rod screw is secured in my bone). Needless to say I am still in pain a week later. I have a sharp pain running down my back and into my right leg sometimes when I sit. It’s really aggravated when I try to sit on the toilet of all things. The last 24 hours have not been great after I had that CT Scan, let me tell you. I don’t do well with all the radioactive dye they give you. It insists on flying out my butt with very little warning! I know I should be grateful that it’s flushing out of my system, but the back pain I’m getting while sitting on the toilet is driving me nuts!

Not much is going on this summer, so I’m going to post some excerpts from my diary from last year’s crazy road trip which I didn’t get around to doing. Wish I had a stash of cash so I could do some more road trips because I love travelling to new places.

Anyhow, I read an article which I liked today and wanted to post it on my blog. Except I have no idea how to do a link. So if you care to read it, go to Inspire Me Today and find